Beyond the Centre
Life does not just happen in the centre. We have a community to explore and our local community is our local curriculum.
Just like tamariki would in their home environment, our tamariki join us when we need to pop out to the dairy to get some milk, bread, or something we forgot in our shopping. We do this regularly. It is fun and routine. It is what kiwis do!
Something else kiwis do, is a bit of DIY. As well as a great manager, TJ is a great handy man. He fixes our gate, replaces our lights, replaces screws that fall out, he even mows our lawns! He is our daycare dad! To do this, he needs resources, so our kaitiaki regularly take us on trips to Bunnings for our home and garden resources. We are lucky it is a short walk from our centre.
Another of our regular favourite trips is to the Fruitvale Train station! We love it! People coming and going on trains. Doors open, doors close, hoots, beeps, noise, and then a quite pattern of pause, until the pattern starts all over again. We watch, count, name, predict. We see patterns and we see things we didn’t expect. This is a part of our local curriculum. It is life.
Lawson Park is a regular destination as well. This is a great park. It has a big and challenging playground for us to climb, swing, balance. Big sport spectator terraces for us to amble over – what a great climbing challenge. Huge open spaces to run, paths to follow, seats to sit and observe.
Manawa Wetlands Reserve is exciting, and we love to walk the trails of the rolling landscape of black sand with a winding stream to Lake Wainamu. It is fabulous and we love to go there.
A part of our graduation celebrations involves leaving Nurturing Hearts with a learning portfolio of our time here. When it is one of the children’s time to graduate, they head off to Warehouse Stationary with their friends to bind their story together into a book. This is a magic and special moment and one of our favourite excursions.
